Tera Online is about to go into it's first weekend of closed beta and I'm pretty excited. It's an action based MMO and it's combat system will be like vindictus or anything of that sort where you can't tab target anything and everything has to be aimed via a crosshair.

Tried this game out over the weekend, it's pretty fun. It's a lot more action-RPGy than most MMOs are, with the combat focusing a lot more than most on avoiding taking damage even in solo encounters. I'd buy it if it weren't for the bad timing of the release; it releases at the beginning of May, but I'd very likely just abandon it for Diablo III once that's out, and with an MMO it feels kind of wasted to play it for two weeks. It's something I'm keeping in mind to check out later though.

I tried out the various melee classes since those seemed most affected by how the combat works; all of them have some baseline ability to help them avoid damage, blocking attacks for two of them, dodging for the other two. Some thoughts on each for anyone interested:

Lancer - Low but steady damage, attack animations are fairly quick, blocking is highly reactive and seems to be usable in the middle of ability animations. That encourages you to try and play it so that you "waste" the least time in your blocking stance, since you can't attack while blocking. Very much meant to be a tank class. Kinda sucks at dealing with large amounts of enemies at once, but works great against single stronger enemies in my opinion, that's also partly due to how blocking works, each individual hit a Lancer blocks consumes a small amount of mana, so blocking a single large attack is much less mana intensive than blocking a high number of small attacks.

Warrior - Medium steady damage, attack animations are a bit slower than the Lancer, the dodge is highly reactive and generally usable in the middle of abilities. More risky than the Lancer, but also more rewarding. This is the game's other tank class, though the timing for dodging is trickier than the timing for blocking, and there's a short (but noticeable) cooldown on the dodge ability. So while the Lancer can just block for a while to check the timing on animations of an enemy, if you dodge too early with a Warrior you'll just have the enemy turn towards you and attack while your dodge is on cooldown. The class does seem better at dealing with multiple targets though compared to the Lancer.

Berserker - High burst damage, very slow attack animations, can block attacks but most abilities can't be cancelled into a block while being used. This class can absolutely murder enemies in short order, though it's resources work much more like Rage does (Degenerates out of combat, high amount generated by attacking), while the other two work more on an energy system. Extremely good AoE skills, and also high single target damage potential. Also noteworthy is that while this class can block, the damage reduction this gives is much lower than it is for the Lancer, it's still good enough to block regular attacks, but you'll likely have to get out of the way of the stronger attacks enemies have. Also unlike the Lancer block, the Berserker block costs mana once to start doing but doesn't cost on any mana per attack blocked. This class also relies heavily on charge attacks; you hold the skill button and the longer you hold it the better the attack becomes, initially you can't move while doing so, but higher level versions of these skills do allow you to move while charging, meaning this class gets a lot more mobile as you level up.

Slayer - High burst damage, slow attack aniumations, can dodge and cancel into a dodge for basic attacks but not for most special abilities. Mana for this class works like it does for Berserkers, the big difference between the two is that the Slayer is more mobile than the Berserker is. They don't have the reliance on charging attacks, but also do a bit less damage because of that. It's easier to avoid damage as one though, since you're spending less time moving at reduced speed. As with the Warrior, dodging is a bit harder than it is to block, but because this class generates mana fairly quickly if you get a few basic attacks in and a lot of the special abilities involve you moving towards an enemy it's easier than with a Warrior to stay at a medium range and moving in when you have an opportunity.

Other stuff of note:

- As amh mentioned, combat is pretty loud your character will yell during each attack done, and hitting (and especially critting) enemies makes a lot of sound too. I personally like it since it helps the combat feel a bit more visceral, but I can understand that being a turn-off.- The armor on female characters tends towards the extremely revealing/impractical end of design. To be fair, the male characters also tend to have bared chests and arms, but it's still a good bit skimpier on the female characters.- You're not going to see anything innovative from the questing, practically all quests are "Go there" "Kill that" "Collect those" quests. After a while I just used them as a guideline of where the game expects me to go than anything, the story didn't really interest me either.

Overall it's a pretty fun game though. There's an open beta this month from the 19th to the 24th in Europe, and the 20th to 23rd in the US in case anyone's interested.

While I'm not particularly interested in this game, I do enjoy more action combat oriented MMO's lately. The combat tends to feel a bit more rewarding, especially on the occasions you can get fancy with your various dodge abilities.

Have been attempting to get into the beta (and even tried to pre-order) but apparently North American servers are blocked to pretty much anyone outside the country. I did a Live chat session with one of their GMs, it proceeded as follows:

Hi, my name is GM DontTazeMeBro. How may I help you?No Nickname Set: I'm trying to log into my account, but it keeps giving me a User Authentication Error. GM DontTazeMeBro: Can I have the Email that you are using to try to sign in?No Nickname Set: XXXXXXXXXXXXXNo Nickname Set: I had some issues even getting to download, but was able to work around that, and now it won't let me log in to try out the beta. GM DontTazeMeBro: You are in a area that IP is blocked.No Nickname Set: is that something that would be fixed by me, or my ISP? GM DontTazeMeBro: No we blocked the IP.No Nickname Set: I see, is there a way to get it unblocked? GM DontTazeMeBro: En Masse will block IPs based on region. Asia, Africa, Russia, and the Middle East are included on the block list. While we appreciate that there are players in these regions who would enjoy playing on En Masse servers, it's unfortunate that the vast majority of Internet traffic we see from these regions are from cyber-criminals relating to account theft, gold-farming and other hacking behavior.

Although you may not be able to play on the North American TERA servers, you may be able to play on the European that are operated by Frogster. Please note that Frogster and En Masse are two different companies and our policies are not the same. You may wish to seek further information on Frogster's policy by visiting their web site at http://tera-europe.com/home.html.

Once again, we do thank you for your interest in TERA and appreciate your feedback on this matter.

No Nickname Set: So, being a member of the military, and being stationed in Korea, I'm just not going to be able to play with a US account then? GM DontTazeMeBro: No, You will not be able to access the North America Servers. i do apologize for the inconvenience. No Nickname Set: I see. And is there somewhere I can go to voice my opinions of that? GM DontTazeMeBro: You can on our Forums which we read very often.No Nickname Set: Alrighty, guess I'll do that. Thank you for the assistance. GM DontTazeMeBro: Is there anything else I can assist you with today? No Nickname Set: Not unless you can somehow unlock it, then that's about it. GM DontTazeMeBro: Sorry that I will not be able to do that for you.GM DontTazeMeBro: Thank you for contacting TERA Support. Please feel free to contact us at anytime if you need further assistance.No Nickname Set: Will do. Have a nice day. GM DontTazeMeBro: Have a nice day as well.

I understand why they're doing it... but it doesn't make it suck any less for those of us stationed overseas. I can't so much as even create a nickname in order to be able to get onto the forums to voice my objections. Guess I won't be giving them my money after all.

So, one one talking about this?Yes, equip/growth/quest systems are the usual MMO stuff.But the combat is, for perhaps the first time in the genre, GOOD.Good as in "i actually need to aim, AT THE MODEL!"Good as in "active parry!"Good as in "kiting is SKILLFUL!"Good as in "Mobs HIT EACH OTHER IF TRICKED IN DOING SO!"Etc.Oh, and you can reliably level by soloing BAMs (elites).

You can't solo BAM's later on as a feasible way to level. At 550k exp for each BAM, around the 50s you're looking at 41 million exp to level. Which would mean that you'd need to kill ~80 or so, and if you solo on-level you're looking at a cool 15 minutes per. Even if you cut it down to 10 minutes per, 14 hours of straight up fighting is a really slow way to get one level.

The combat is addictive. Especially if you play a Block class like the Berserker and can pull off some extremely fun stuff with it. Boss has a 40 ayrd range and an emote that says "YOU MUST RUN AWAY FROM ME OR I DIE?". Block and profit.

Darielle wrote:You can't solo BAM's later on as a feasible way to level. At 550k exp for each BAM, around the 50s you're looking at 41 million exp to level. Which would mean that you'd need to kill ~80 or so, and if you solo on-level you're looking at a cool 15 minutes per. Even if you cut it down to 10 minutes per, 14 hours of straight up fighting is a really slow way to get one level.

The combat is addictive. Especially if you play a Block class like the Berserker and can pull off some extremely fun stuff with it. Boss has a 40 ayrd range and an emote that says "YOU MUST RUN AWAY FROM ME OR I DIE?". Block and profit.

oh, i don't know - my sorcerer has levelled up from 18 to 35 on 100% BAMs (and red quests) for now. Sells <rune> of the titans and buys gear.

Each normal mob killed gives around 50-60k at that level, quest turnings would be in the 450-600k range, and the story quests can give anywhere between 800k and 6 million depending. Essentially doing 2 normal quests will be between 10 and 15% of a level and probably take 15-20 mins, a bit more for the harder stuff.

You can get a level every ... 4-5 hours if you go hard while questing.

That's AFTER hitting the level 54 jump where you enter Val Elenium and suddenly mobs have twice the HP they had in Sylvanoth. Upto Sylvanoth, you're looking at maybe 3.5 hours if you AREN'T going hard.

And of course, grouping makes things sail by even faster.

I'm at 57 going on 58 now, and quest turnins for normal yellow quests are 800k to 3 million exp, with 52 million exp needed to level. Probably taken maybe an horu and a half to get to 50% now, and it's speeding up because the new skills and weapons and stuff are catching up to the spike in mob health.

Yes. Basilisks give like 20% of a level at level 20. You don't get that for soloing a BAM in the 50's.

Once you hit 58, you get shoved T12 gear for basically free, normal mobs spike up to giving 100k exp, and quests giev a minimum of 1 mill experience. But the 57->58 requires 52 mill exp and the 58->59 stretch requires 100 million. The mobs at 58 die faster than the mobs did at 56. The mobs at 54 take twice as logn to kill as mobs at 53. That's just how the things ebb and flow.

okay, but what's really interesting is the Questing:BAMing xp ratio.with a proper party, at ~30 i could exp 2-3 times as fast BAMing instead of questing. It is really a letdown and it's not doable in the 50s.

As far as I know, WoW is the only MMO where it's more efficient to quest for XP rather than just grind it out. Granted, my experience with MMOs is pretty limited (only DAoC, EQII, and a bit of Tera), but still.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

My comment was only that the rate of SOLOING Bam's (because that's what was being talked about) isn't worth it, since you're looking at a looong time to solo one BAM. WIth a group, a BAM will die in like 3-5 mins.

After all when you're killing a BAM in a group, you can go full bore. If you're solo, you wind up spending half your time either running around like a headless chicken or hiding behind Block and sneaking in autoattacks instead of being able to freely Thunder Strike and all that.

So far the only instance I've done is Bastion of Lok - there's generally a slayer orberserker who will rush in and start spamming AoE, turning trash pulls into chaosin the finest traditions of WoW heroic runs. I've tried just picking up the 1-2 biggestmelee guys in each pull, making a half-assed effort at corraling the rest, and nohealers have cussed me out yet.

Tanking bosses and trying to take zero damage is a blast. I just got Death Grip (Leash)and Shield Counter, which is a bit of an energy hog but still seems worth it.

I'm trying to keep Armorsmithing at at least 5 x level, and so far it's worthless;everything I can make is nowhere near as good as my quest rewards. I got spoiled byTOR where I was crafting small upgrades nearly every session. Maybe trying to maintain7 x level would be more like it, if I can afford to. (I think I have 15 gold, whichfeels like not very much.)

Threat definitely seems to decay. I soloed a BAM down to 25%, screwed up for severalseconds and ended up block-turtling while I waited for cooldowns, a Mystic who had beenwatching jumped in to help and pulled the thing off me in a couple seconds. (Happyending; the cooldowns popped and the good guys won.)

Abilities:I sometimes pull with Charging Lunge > Challenging Shout just to get a jump on the DPS.

Shield Barrage is a good way of rounding up minions, but the Spring Attack(?) procexpires really fast. You have to be on that space bar, like right now, or insteadof the Spring you'll jump, then you'll get knocked down, and then you hope thatRetaliation is up.

Equipment:I'm gemming for HP and MP regen; nice for soloing. For dungeon runs I could see havinga set that's damage reduction/MP regen instead. Might depend on how attentive the healer is.

I have glyphs for more MP regen from Combo Attack, more threat from Shield Counter, and +Power after a successful block. I'd like to have a shorter cooldown on Challenging Shout for when things go to shit, and then perhaps the reduced MP cost on Shield Counter. (If there's shorter cooldown on Leash, I might want that. I'll have to tank more to see how the base CD feels.)

In closing, my female Aman is currently full commando except for about four square inches of hip-joint protection.

I like the threat decay, because it makes it fun when the boss turns around because you had a couple of 200k and 300k crits in a row, and now you have to block or evade through something as a dps - between that and the boss just doing his thing which involves things like stepping on you, jumping on you, turning around and trying to blast you, etc., things stay very active all the time.

As my Berserker is getting geared out, I've got my Warrior up to 41 now, and intend to tank with it. WArrior DPS is incredibly fun though, and soloing is a blast, especially soloing BAM's. Whereas on a Berserker, it was fairly easy to just turtle up and block all the things if you absolutely had to, as a Warrior you can stay active and do a lot of cool things, use your dodge to position yourself behind the boss and unload a Traverse/Vortex+Blade Draw combo, use Smoke Aggressor to do the same, etc.

Apparently it's impossible to cancel your subscription to Tera. Even going through the phone service people, I still got charged for the subscription renewal.

Oh well, I guess I can just cancel the card I used and get a new one. There are a lot of things I can forgive with a freshly launched IP (which Tera is most definitely NOT), but billing problems? Not one of those things. Tera's been out long enough, internationally (1.5 YEARS, ffs), that this shit should just plain WORK.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

US. I ended up waiting on hold to talk to someone on the phone for a little over an hour, then got it taken care of. Still, that's inexcusable. Make sure your billing works if you're going to release a subscription based game!

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

Yeah, basic billing functions not working in almost any situation is inexcusable. It's kind of a mission critical thing on both the vendor and customer sides. Hopefully it's an isolated problem and/or they've sorted it out.

Nope. It's not an isolated problem, there are billing issues all over the damn place - enough to where they're giving out free days to anyone that asks for them.

Can't cancel automatic billing (haven't been able to do this since launch day)Subscriptions aren't going through (Digital River is apparently bad at recurring charges)Can't re-up a cancelled subscription (the button is just plain missing on the account management page)Even after the subscription is charged, can't login because the game thinks you don't have an active subscription.

Etc, etc... there are a bunch of different problems with it right now, not just the one I had. Some (maybe most? Who knows - people rarely go onto the forums except to whine) people are getting lucky and having things go right, but there are enough problems that it even merited a status update on the general forum.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

EME's biggest problem is that Digital River isn't playing nice, especially with foreign customers. In that regards, EME's actually done a pretty fantastic job at making live support more accessible, and actually giving people the time without being bitchy at giving people free time when they ask for it, etc.

It's a relatively isolated problem though - the amount of people with subscription issues is fairly small, but because it's a big deal they've kept communicative on the issue while they work it out.

Hell, when we ran into a bug in the game where a world boss was bugged and wouldn't spawn, the GM tried to spawn it and it didn't work, and a couple of people had been camping it for a few hours, they gave all of us a free pre-order mount for our "inconvenience". Now I just need to find a couple more bugs and I'll have all the mounts ^.^